1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a monitoring system for such as SCADA (supervisoly control and data acquisition) system, which collects measurement data, condition data and the like of equipment to be monitored, and displays them on a display device, and more particularly, it relates to a monitoring system which is provided with the function of effectively displaying the condition of a plant on a small display device when there takes place an abnormality such as failure or the like therein.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In systems for monitoring a plant or the like, the measurement data, the condition data and the like (monitor data) of the equipment to be monitored are collected and displayed on a display device. An operator always watches the display contents and confirms whether there takes place no abnormality so that upon occurrence of abnormally, he or she can take appropriate action to deal with the abnormality in accordance with the displayed contents. However, in case where what is to be monitored is on a large scale and includes a great deal of objects to be monitored, it becomes difficult to display all the contents on one screen. In such a case, conventionally, the contents to be displayed were classified into a plurality of graphical contents so that necessary graphical contents among them could be seen, thus enabling the operator to grasp the monitored information.
As an example of such a method, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-259780 discloses a method in which a, plurality of graphical contents are prepared beforehand, and displayed at a later time with the latest monitored data values being superposed thereon. Also, there is another method in which a plurality of pieces of equipment to be monitored are stored in a hierarchical structure, so that monitor data values can be displayed for each piece of equipment. In the former method, there are the following problems. That is, when an abnormality as predicted has occurred, the situation or condition of the abnormality can be grasped or understood with one screen, but in some cases, however, it might become necessary to confirm the current values of monitored data over several screens depending upon the condition of the abnormality, thus preventing the operator from quickly grasping the monitored data. In particular, in case of the graphical content being small, when the condition of a plant is confirmed and grasped by use of the display part of a portable terminal for example, even ten to twenty screens to say nothing of several screens are needed for confirmation, and hence it is not easy to properly decide the monitor data for which piece of equipment is to be included in each screen. In addition, it is not easy to extract necessary pieces of monitor data from a lot of screens either. Even in cases where an index is affixed to each screen, it is not easy to make appropriate selection among them if the hierarchy or depth of the index is shallow. Besides, if, on the contrary, the hierarchy is deep, it becomes difficult to look at a plurality of related screens while browsing through them. Moreover, although a method is adopted in which the entire structure is first grasped and then details thereof are confirmed, it is necessary to prepare respective screens beforehand. Additionally, when the screen is small, it is likely that the entire structure could not be displayed with one screen, and hence it might become necessary to divide the structure into a plurality of screens. Further, much labor is required for preparing a lot of these screens, too. In the latter method, though it is comparatively easy to acquire information on a certain piece of equipment to be monitored, it is generally necessary to acquire monitor data on a plurality of pieces of equipment to be monitored in case of an abnormal situation. Thus, examining a lot of pieces of monitor data one by one requires enormous efforts as in the above-mentioned case where an index is affixed to each screen.
All the above problems are due to the fact that there are too many pieces of equipment which are required to be displayed. Therefore, attempts have been made to select only a minimum number of pieces of equipment to be monitored through extraction to display the monitored data thereof. For instance, Japanese Patent No.714273 attempts to easily retrieve and set a point identification number (PID) corresponding to each input point of plant equipment based on fragmentary knowledge and memory, so that specific pieces of equipment can be extracted to display their information by designating a certain PID. Moreover, according to an article entitled xe2x80x9cPlant Monitoring System Using WWW-Compatible Portable Terminalsxe2x80x9d published in the 61st National Conference of Information Processing Society of Japan, only those of input and output points (tags) allocated to objects on a certain screen definition which correspond to serious faults are extracted. Alternatively, among the input and output points allocated to objects on a certain screen definition, those equipment objects belonging to the input and output points which have serious fault attributes in the equipment objects are extracted to display their information by using the pieces of equipment to be monitored (equipment objects) which are represented as objects.
However, in the former extraction method, one retrieval is needed to see the monitor data of one piece of equipment to be monitored. Thus, in order to see the monitor data of a plurality of pieces of equipment to be monitored, it is necessary to perform narrowing of the monitor data many times for the respective pieces of equipment. As a result, it is not easy to sequentially retrieve the plurality of pieces of equipment, which have a certain relation to the equipment that is the origin of generating a warning and which appear to be warning-related equipment, so as to confirm or check the monitor data thereof. In particular, this becomes a serious problem in cases where a large amount of information cannot be displayed at a time due to a small graphical content.
Furthermore, in, the latter extraction method, in cases where there are a lot of equipment objects having serious fault attributes, it is practically impossible to specify which ones are given priority among those which have once been extracted. As a result, an appropriate extraction cannot be made. On the contrary, even if an operator wants to check the situation of another piece of equipment after abnormality of a certain piece of equipment has been confirmed, this equipment cannot be extracted if a serious fault attribute is not set to its equipment object.
Thus, it is difficult to properly extract a group of pieces of related equipment and display the monitored data thereof with a small number of graphical contents upon occurrence of abnormality. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare a lot of estimated graphical contents beforehand, or examine related screens for each piece of equipment or object through information retrieval or the like so as to avoid the preparation of estimated graphical contents. In particular, in cases where it is desired that the condition of a plant is able to be confirmed and grasped from any remote place by using a portable terminal, the above-described problems become more remarkable because the graphical content of the portable terminal is small.
Accordingly, the present invention is intended to obviate the problems as referred to above.
In one aspect, the present invention resides in a monitoring system including: an output device which presents monitor data to an operator; and a data processing device which has a data collection part for collecting the monitor data, processes the data collected by the monitor data collection part, and passes the data thus processed to the output device as an output content. The data processing device includes: a structured equipment information storage part for storing structured equipment information which includes equipment information on a plurality of pieces of equipment and relational information describing relations among the plurality of pieces of equipment; and a monitored equipment extraction part which roughly extracts, from structured equipment information stored in the structured equipment information storage part, equipment information and relational information on those pieces of equipment which have a prescribed relation to a piece of equipment of interest having a designation of attributes with the equipment of interest having the designation of attributes being set as a base point for extraction. The monitored equipment extraction part calculates a weight value for each of the roughly extracted pieces of equipment from equipment information and relational information on the roughly extracted pieces of equipment, and finally extracts pieces of equipment information as a related equipment information set based on the weight values. With this arrangement, it is possible to extract those pieces of equipment which are closely related to a piece of equipment of interest in an appropriate manner, whereby a narrowed or reduced number of pieces of related equipment can be output. In addition, it becomes unnecessary to prepare in advance a lot of graphical contents, which could be conceived from a relation to the equipment of interest, as fixed graphical contents. As a result, by designating and selecting a certain relation with respect to a piece of equipment according to a situation, it is possible to extract and output only a small number of pieces of related equipment which have the designated and selected relation with respect to that piece of equipment as occasion arises. Thus, it becomes easy to deal with the matters by the use of a display device of a small screen.
In another aspect, the present invention resides in a monitoring system including: an output unit which presents monitor data to an operator; a first data processing device; and a second data processing device which processes data collected, passes the data to the output device as an output content. The first data processing device includes: a structured equipment information storage part for storing structured equipment information which includes equipment information on a plurality of pieces of equipment and relational information describing relations among the plurality of pieces of equipment; a monitored equipment extraction part which roughly extracts, from structured equipment information stored in the structured equipment information storage part, equipment information and relational information on those pieces of equipment which have a prescribed relation to a piece of equipment of interest having a designation of attributes with the equipment of interest having the designation of attributes being set as a base point for extraction, the monitored equipment extraction part being further operable to set a weight value for each of the roughly extracted pieces of equipment from equipment information and relational information on the roughly extracted pieces of equipment, and finally extract pieces of equipment information as a related equipment information set based on the weight values; and a static output information storage part for storing static output information which relates a plurality of related equipment information sets, which are finally extracted by the monitored equipment extraction part with a plurality of pieces of equipment of interest including a designation of attributes being set as base points of extraction, respectively, to the plurality of pieces of equipment of interest including a designation of the attributes set as base points of extraction, respectively. The second the data processing device includes: a second static output information storage part for storing the static output information prepared by the first data processing device; a data collection part for collecting monitor data; and an output content synthesis part for extracting a related equipment information set corresponding to a specific piece of equipment of interest including a designation of attributes from the static output information stored in the second static output information storage part, the output content synthesis part being operable to synthesize an output content from the extracted related equipment information set and the monitor data collected by the data collection part and to pass the thus synthesized output content to the output device. With this arrangement, by using weight coefficient storage information and structured equipment information, it is possible to extract in advance a set of pieces of equipment closely related to a piece of equipment of interest to define an output content based thereon, so that the content of an output can be prepared by using the previously defined output content as it is or by processing it in an appropriate manner. As a result, the processing of extracting a set of pieces of related equipment information during online becomes unnecessary. Therefore, the amount of labor required for defining the output content can be reduced, and an effective extraction can be carried out.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments of the present invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.